As the saying goes, less is more. The same goes for words. Listen as Politico and Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei shares what he’s learned leading two media companies — and how to radically rethink the way you write to keep people’s attention in a distracted digital world.
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Madara ram
August 22, 2022 at 5:44 pm
If you are on Youtube, you do comment, or any social media in this case, and therefore you have to read to be able to respond to some credible and acknowledgeable sense of things described by other users.
The only or most common case scenario .. is that they write perceptually subjectively instead of objectively..possibly lack of focus, experience, or because of emotional information bias causing stress and/or due devaluing their personal interests. Like trying to taunt of preferred hobby or pastimes useless or unpopular!!
but then, who cares when they all blind and not what needs to be seen. Ooh! and about the video …it relates more to Hemingway journalistic theory which conflicts nowadays with the media being grammatically lethargic.
Thanks for sharing.
Steven Porter
August 22, 2022 at 5:51 pm
0:30
True. In college I wrote a 25 page term paper and in error turned in the draft with a bunch of typos, grammer errors, run on sentences, spelling errors, etc. The first couple paragraphs were fine so when it got retuned it was graded ‘A+’ with a ‘Good work’ handwritten by the professor. Obviously ( and luckily for me ) he didn’t bother reading past the first sentence.
Steven Porter
August 22, 2022 at 6:02 pm
3:07
Sounds like Congress not reading bills before voting.
Lisa Love Ministry
August 22, 2022 at 6:22 pm
The world-society is a cult the Matrix, must be Born Again.
John 3:3
Greg Napert
August 22, 2022 at 7:06 pm
I’m not sure what this is about because his intro was so long I lost interest and clicked on another video.
Всеволод Тищенко
August 22, 2022 at 7:28 pm
Sometimes people talk just to talk.
Hans O'lowe
August 22, 2022 at 7:39 pm
The hand gestures are not really working for me. They seem.. _off_ somehow.
Tom
August 22, 2022 at 7:54 pm
How embarrasing… a topic on keeping it brief spends 11 minutes getting to “tip number 1”. And then the tips are painfully generic (and themselves not followed by the speaker)
1. Stop being self indulgent
2. Be interesting
3. Keep it simple
4. Write like a human
5. Just stop
Noface
August 22, 2022 at 8:11 pm
I don’t agree fully, sometimes you need to use the right word to convey what you truly mean, and sometimes you are writing for that audience that can be bothered to read it – not just producing bite-sized simplified text.
William P
August 22, 2022 at 9:01 pm
Oddly, for a talk telling me to use less words, he talked for 15 minutes – much longer than most of the Ted Talks that I watch.
Bob Ross is god
August 22, 2022 at 11:45 pm
I feel like this could be satire. I was sitting there waiting for something more than the most cliche ted talks lines and that never came.
Jacob Timmons
August 22, 2022 at 10:01 pm
What kinda of crazy person puts the best part of a news article at the end? Do they not teach inverted pyramid anymore?
Sir Doc
August 22, 2022 at 10:13 pm
LOL Point 1, “focus on what they want.” Yes, what I want is to hear you go on and on and on about your jobs, accomplishments, and the big names that you work with. Oh please make another video about you.
Neil D
August 22, 2022 at 10:20 pm
Good points. However succumbing complex issues to basic principles is dumbing down. Endure and debate or else what is left?
Harry Pearle
August 22, 2022 at 10:41 pm
DEMOCRATS need Repeated CATCHWORDS, etc to win in 2022
Dems keep rambling on and on, losing and insulting voters. They will likely lost to Trumpism.
IDEA Contests for Democrats might come up with winning messages, etc. Please talk to Dems
============================================================================
Sam Moore
August 22, 2022 at 10:47 pm
TLDW
Harry Pearle
August 22, 2022 at 10:54 pm
IHAVSPKN (NY license plate, idea from Star Wars)
I look for catchy license plate vanity plates, such as this one.
We might start with one or two words in abbreviated for (TRY WAIT, Saying in Hawaii on license)
================ Again, please help Democrats to save democracy ================
Harry Pearle
August 22, 2022 at 10:55 pm
thanks much
Ralph Sanders
August 22, 2022 at 11:15 pm
I just discovered this new thing and I want to tell you all about it. It’s called good writing.
Michael Lampell
August 22, 2022 at 11:22 pm
I always say get to the point but there’s something hidden in the details. If it’s important enough, you can get to the details quickly enough.
The concept of Plain English rebranded. Groovy.
Sophia Gray
August 23, 2022 at 12:10 am
It’s like when you ask someone the time and they tell you how to build a clock. 🤦🏽♀️
Randy James
August 23, 2022 at 12:12 am
Laconic
Kathryn Rohr
August 23, 2022 at 12:24 am
Nicholas Carr described this “scanning vs deep reading” phenomenon in great detail in his 2010 book “The Shallows, What the internet is doing to our brains” and is worth a read for anyone with further interest (and he provides provocative evidence it changes the mechanism our brain uses to process and store information)
Robert Uchman
August 23, 2022 at 12:28 am
They don’t read your articles because they already agree with your political viewpoint or they disagree with your political viewpoint and a dismiss it immediately because people are so adamant about one ideology and they never look at other people’s viewpoints they don’t look at facts they don’t follow laws and they never agree with each other because they think they either have to choose one viewpoint or another instead of trying to either meld the two to come to some better conclusion or negate both of those viewpoints and come up with something entirely new people are always in a rush for what reason I’ll never know you only need to rush when there’s an emergency but still instead of remaining haphazard whether there’s an emergency or not and trying to get to some conclusion that should never be a basis for a plan and ideology or methodology never rush into false hopes but at the same time don’t if the facts spare out continue to believe the same repetitive way of doing things it will change the outcome people love to put labels on things and they don’t know how close they are in their viewpoints
R N
August 23, 2022 at 12:57 pm
People love to disconnect this is how. One of the reasons why people make bad lifetime decisions. Being less picky, dumb down, have a short attention span. The same cause could be said, who bothered to read the instructions manual. We should be just waiting about the next train wreck that is about to happen. So yea less will be more, but take it with the note “sometimes”.
Martín
August 23, 2022 at 12:31 am
Watched this video on 2X
Robert Uchman
August 23, 2022 at 12:34 am
They want the facts and they want you to get to the point unless you’re comedian or you’re providing some form of entertainment that they enjoy they think a lot of the daily things that they do are not enjoyable or entertaining and they want escapism and if you trying to tell them something political like your two online websites they don’t care to hear it get to the point because they know most of it is a load of s*** and they’re not going to be able to do anything to these individuals or get anything from these individuals and these individuals will never get together with the other individuals in the opposing political party to formulate a plan that will work for everybody and that might not have nothing to do with opposing parties that might have to do with budget constraints and ridiculous regulations that have no bearing on any of us whatsoever no matter how you see the scope of normalcy someone will always fall outside of that blinding narrow beam that someone will love to point a finger at and ostracize them and metaphorically hang them on a cross (to take away the sins of the world LOL).
Steve Muratore
August 23, 2022 at 1:04 am
Twitter is teaching me to say more with fewer words.
Artimis Fowl
August 23, 2022 at 1:34 am
I put relatively high odds on a fair share of this ‘data’ on people not reading coming from bots? Web skimmers and the like.
I mean, people do skim headlines. But I feel like a nontrivial % of the time I actually open a story, I read more than the first page. Does the data contradict me?
River May
August 23, 2022 at 1:45 am
I think this guy needs to make a presentation on “How to Speak Less but Say More” instead 🤣🤣🤣
R N
August 23, 2022 at 12:29 pm
His ambition less is more, his findings less is more, his conclusion less is more.
Rutherford B. Hayes
August 23, 2022 at 5:05 am
me tech writer good
eric Li
August 23, 2022 at 5:08 am
I don’t get the latest sentence, what does he mean by saying it’s ultimately good for you because you will be hurt again? Can someone explain it to me?
R N
August 23, 2022 at 1:01 pm
He means people who won’t read your long lines, are stating, “it’s not important, you don’t make sense, or getting the feeling of not being in touch with the audience you wrote something for. It may make you end up getting hurt. (While you put all the effort into something, nobody seems interested in.)
eric Li
August 23, 2022 at 3:32 pm
@R N thanks for the explanation!
R N
August 23, 2022 at 3:38 pm
@eric Li No problem.
eric Li
August 23, 2022 at 3:49 pm
@R N
Sin
August 23, 2022 at 6:10 am
Be human, not bots
So clearly, thanks for this amazing talk sir
F D
August 23, 2022 at 6:45 am
Great way to insult your crowd before your talk. The worst thing you can do is tell people they know nothing.
R N
August 23, 2022 at 1:05 pm
Or take is as, they who know nothing, are very wise men.
F D
August 23, 2022 at 6:46 am
People turned you off the minute you tried to prove yourself and insult the audience
Silver Legend
August 23, 2022 at 7:16 am
In addition to using fewer words less arm-waving and bouncing about like Tigger would aid communication.
Maximilian Frühschütz
August 23, 2022 at 8:49 am
1) “Stop being selfish” — Audience first
It is not about you, but about your audience.
Cut length, people won’t pay attention for a long time
2) “Grab me!” — What is the one thing you want me to remember?
No matter what you communicate, make sure you bring across your most important point.
3) “Keep it simple”
One sentence/paragraph is better than two.
Use simple sentence structure.
Use simple words.
4) “Be human, write like a human”
Don’t try to be a Harvard professor; bring your point across like you are talking to someone at the bar.
5) “Just stop” — Use as few words and sentences as possible
There you go, this would not have needed 15 minutes.
Iffah H
August 24, 2022 at 1:43 am
Thank you for the highlight!
Zac
August 25, 2022 at 5:05 pm
My thoughts exactly 😂
ZymaPro
August 25, 2022 at 5:50 pm
In writing it doesn’t need 15 min. I am patient with it as the medium is in person [at the time] and video. Context matters and I’m sure he condensed as much as he could. I appreciated the length as I also feel he got to the point. For our generation tho we do see through the “I’m going to tell you at the end.” Just start should be point 6. lol Get to it as soon as you can. But it does also go back to the balance of being human point 4. There’s a balance between who is being selfish. Let the audience be selfish but also don’t dehumanize the delivery.
Zeen Alam
August 23, 2022 at 8:57 am
Give them there time back that they deserve, rightfully 😊.❤
John Overall
August 23, 2022 at 9:50 am
Excellent talk
RubberDog
August 23, 2022 at 11:12 am
Plz list 5 points, with brief description, comment. I got lost in the in between words.
R N
August 23, 2022 at 12:22 pm
Less is more.(Sometimes!)
jedics
August 23, 2022 at 2:51 pm
I don’t need to “look at the data” to know that most people think the more words they use to say something the more important they think it makes them, Americans are especially guilty of this. If the first paragraph doesn’t give me a clear and easy to absorb expression of the story then I know the rest of it isn’t going to improve and they aren’t very good at their craft. Poetry has something to teach here, saying or implying much with very few words.
Josh Fraser
August 23, 2022 at 4:43 pm
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August 23, 2022 at 5:50 pm
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August 23, 2022 at 5:51 pm
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August 23, 2022 at 6:08 pm
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August 23, 2022 at 6:16 pm
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August 23, 2022 at 6:22 pm
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заметки философа
August 28, 2022 at 11:41 am
🙂🙂🙂
Learn-ED
August 28, 2022 at 7:57 pm
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Windy Gomes
August 23, 2022 at 6:04 pm
So the old journalism saying, “Tell ’em what yer gona tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em,” still applies? Or is that wasting time?
денис баженов
August 23, 2022 at 6:50 pm
Soon the attention span of 99% will be barely long enough to read two emoticons.
IQ tests must be mandatory before people get access to social media. Otherwise very soon one emoticon will be the most they can handle.
Bernard Shaw said that 2% think – really. Chekhov – 99% don’t have intelligence.
Then political correctness made such realistic statements risky.
But even more true today.
Olgay Celik
August 23, 2022 at 7:32 pm
They key messages are in the end of the video. He speaks a lot without giving any tip first 10 minutes.
Saba Alink
August 23, 2022 at 8:45 pm
Very helpful
atenas80525
August 23, 2022 at 11:49 pm
Is it possible that the quality of what we read has gone down so it is not worth spending the time in deep focus on it?
vobic13
August 24, 2022 at 12:16 pm
i like how he said all the left wing media LOL and wonder why nobody reads it 🤣
Peter H
August 24, 2022 at 1:40 pm
I’ve been going to Catholic masses since I was a child 45 years ago and about 80% of the sermons have been less than 10 minutes at about 20 churches I’ve been to. About another 19% of sermons have been less than 15 minutes . The final one percent have been less than 20 minutes. I have never heard one longer than that. On weekends, most masses at most churches last for 55 minutes or an hour. The non-sermon parts of the mass take about 45 or 50 minutes between the entrance and exit, the prayers, the readings, several songs and communion and announcements. That doesn’t leave much time for the sermon.
On weekdays, masses usually skip all of the songs and announcements, and communion is very quick because the number of people at a weekday mass is small. Sermons are usually two or three minutes long and the whole mass usually takes only about a half hour.
So I think this speaker might be twisting the words of Pope Francis in order to make a point, but at the expense of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis on three different occasions has told priests to keep sermons to 10 minutes or less. I seriously don’t think he’s ever said that he thinks a significant percentage of priests regularly give sermons that are 30 to 40 minutes long, which is the negative impression that this TEDTalk leaves with viewers.
It paints a negative picture that is inaccurate about a religion that 1.5 billion people are part of. And doing that was not needed in order to make his points. It was fine to talk about the pope recommending that sermons be a maximum of 10 minutes and to allude to that sometimes some priests go well above 10 minutes. But it is wrong to convey that Catholic services are regularly plagued by priests droning on for 30 or 40 minutes.
Peter H
August 24, 2022 at 1:44 pm
Also, about a third of priests give sermons that are too short, and when they’re done, I would have liked for them to say more.
Michael Raphael
August 24, 2022 at 5:46 pm
LOVE this. I need this so badly. The professor asks for a 100 word discussion post, and I give him 500+ masterfully written words. The professors don’t have time for that crap! I’m secretly trying to impress myself and others. On the other hand, when I wan to be precise with the idea I’m trying to express, that seems to either require bigger words or more words.
Martin Zarzar
August 24, 2022 at 9:34 pm
I watched the first minute of this. Great video…
Getting Warmer
August 24, 2022 at 9:49 pm
I found this overlong so stopped listening at 7.48 even though I was interested and engaged up to almost that point. Ironic but true.
Armin
August 25, 2022 at 2:21 pm
Awsome
Jamie Miller
August 25, 2022 at 2:33 pm
The ABCs of miltary communication, at least what I was taught back in my time, mid-1980s. Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Pretty simple.
ZymaPro
August 25, 2022 at 5:53 pm
Warf – “Some speak much but say very little. Some speak very little but say much.” (Star Trek TNG)
SteVeL
August 25, 2022 at 11:49 pm
13:47
The irony of him constantly giving too many examples in this presentation…😅
SMOKEY BOUDIN
August 26, 2022 at 9:39 pm
I wish I had those 15 minutes back.
wolf rain88
August 29, 2022 at 2:58 am
all of what he is saying is true some people only go for a sentence or two before becoming bored with it. if not trying to get a point across just right how you want to.
Dan Lowe
August 29, 2022 at 7:16 pm
Great talk.(two words)
Christopher Wolf
September 1, 2022 at 5:31 pm
To sum up, don’t be selfish, beause nobody is interested in you. Be focused on the needs of your audience and ask yourself how tp grab your people which you wanna reach.
Jon and Alison Driscoll
September 2, 2022 at 12:47 pm
He doesn’t consider the downside. And there is a downside. There is a downside of political coverage being dumbed down into simple concepts, expressed in simple sentences. Humans are capable of complex thought but this approach feeds our weakness for lazy, distractedness. That’s the downside.
Phillip Rader
September 3, 2022 at 7:49 pm
I’ve used axios for my research. It’s really helpful
Martin Bigger
September 4, 2022 at 4:04 am
Im not sure how i can keep it short and get an interesting point out early while using common vocabulary if i want to say anything of substance.
cybersekkin
September 5, 2022 at 4:05 am
race to the bottom?